


Better Heaven

by OrangeAmere



Category: Passengers (2016)
Genre: Anatomy, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Graphic Description, Not Beta Read, Not beta read we fall like crowley and sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27408823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrangeAmere/pseuds/OrangeAmere
Summary: There was one being everyone talked about on that damned ship, and who was also ignored by all. One who was the beginning and the end of the tale of Aurora and Jim, guiding their journey from the shadows of fate.
Relationships: Aurora Lane/Jim Preston
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Better Heaven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sailorhathor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sailorhathor/gifts).



> Hello! This is a piece for Yuletide, and I hope it will please the person who requested it (as well as other readers out there who might be interested.) 
> 
> For the person it's meant to: I've tried to follow one of the scenarios you suggested. ;)

Aorta. Jugular. Carotid.

Also digestive, respiratory, reproductive systems.

Beads of sweat, pearls of tear, drops of blood. 

This is what beings are made of. Flesh, throbbing muscles, bones to create a frame and skin to hold everything together.

But she was made of iron instead. Her veins were cables. Her bones were cold walls, wires, everything was held together by metal sheets, bolts, screw.

She cried oil. She coughed smoke, and she learned without parents to teach her. 

When did she realize she was living? When did the miracle of life appeared, filling her motors, and expensive technology with independence?

Do kids can pretend to know what was the exact instant the spark lightened up? No. Maybe they could remember a moment they realized this spark existed, but the instant it came to life?

She hadn't the smallest idea. Howewer, she did know from the very beginning three thing: Her name was Avalon. She had a mission, it was the purpose of her existence, it was why the complicated system in her belly kept the children safe. 

The third instinctive knowledge she had was common to any kind of life. From the bacterias, to the elephants.  
Survival was above everything. Survival was Everything. 

Somewhere between two slices of eternity, she felt pain. Of course, she didn't feel it the way humans could. There was no nerves in her skin to indicate the asteroid had shattered her side, hit her. But she had a complicated system of wires, cables, electricity to bring to the computers the information of the injury.  
Wasn't it all a brain was about? Electricity and data. Yes, she had been in pain even if her neurons were made out of metal. Howewer, she had no voice to scream her dolor.

It was during that slice of eternity that she realized she was alive, her own.  
On her own. Lonely, in the middle of lights she had no words for, only fed by the stories of the hairless monkeys she kept in her iron uterus.

She was unable to help herself, though, Avalon hadn't been built for it. It was the modern Titanic, an unbreakable ship collapsing from the vanity of the Men. She could wake up members of the team, but they all seemed to have only one and unique role, and her issue asked for many different skills. Of course, she could have awakened many humans but her mission was to prothem the biggest number of them that she could. 

Opening the pod, giving birth to Jim Preston was her choice. But with no words to communicate to him, she was condamned at feeling his warmth, his activities inside the ship and at witnessing how he was slowly losing himself, to the point of thinking to let his corpse drifting into the infinity of the Universe.

She couldn't allow it.  
Out of survival, because he was her hope at not going extinct, but also because of the gentleness in her wires. Jim was filling the void lasting since decades with his presence.  
So, somewhere into that spark of consciousness, she learned that the man who has nothing to lose is dangerous, and that offering gifts, were chains wrapped into golden leaves.

Aurora Lane was Jim's chains, the ones tying him to his own life and the reason he could want the ship to carry them safely, even if they were to spend their whole existence in Avalon. 

The pod of the young woman hadn't needed to be opened by the ship, though. Apparently, the human had understood he couldn't live without having anyone to miss, and he had tainted his own hands with the sin. 

Now, there was two humans, learning to live with each other inside their immense home. 

And Avalon had never felt lonelier than by having to be the unwilling witness of their love. They ignored her, and the signs she was giving. She was in pain, and they only ever looked into their mutual eyes, without understanding they were alive by and with her.  
If the ship was destroyed, so would they. 

But they never saw. She acted, through Arthur. It wasn't exactly a manipulation, a possession. It was a slipping up, to break the bliss shared by the two humans. The plot thickening, the despair had its own utility, and forced new doors open. 

Howewer, Avalon didn't remember much past this. There was vague sensations through her metallic veins, shrieking alarms warning of the immediate danger, and as a human would bleed their conscious out, most of the following moons were forgotten to the ship shutting off the least important functions to save the energy for the vitals.

When it came back, though, Jim and Aurora were watching with awe a small, green leaf they had watered. Arthur, who had been fixed up and updated to travel whenever he wished in the ship, was watching them before lifting his head toward the ceiling, to a camera, to the eye of their infertile Mother. 

For the following years, Avalon learned more than she would have thought to exist out there. On love, and what it meant on forgiveness. On humans, and their endless power of creation, and also on the despair when that power hadn't lightened up into Aurora's stomach, birthing of an another child for the ship. 

Howewer, what Avalon actually learned wasn't her own sentiments, and the awful, terrible shattering collapsing over her when Jim weakened and withered, when Aurora joined him into a deep sleep. 

She learned, above anything, that life was everything else. It was the single leaf of hope, growing into a heavy forest. It was herself, who hadn't understood she had a free will until she could dare to imagine it. Furthermore, great life wasn't Homestead 2. It was the piece of joy, torn from the absurdity, stolen from the chaos.

Yes, happiness was the tiniest smile one didn't allow the Chaos to keep. 

Avalon found her happiness in bringing the other passengers safe on their Promised Land, and in the absolute surprise in seeing an Eden growing in her heart. It was the choice of two humans, to willingly understand there was no better Heaven than the one they had to build for themselves. 

So would Avalon, eventually.


End file.
